San Rafael City Schools Strive For Better Nutrition

San Rafael City Schools is slowly implementing a new Food Services program aimed at increasing the nutritional value of cafeteria food and reducing waste.

“We are taking a look, at a grander level, at what our kids are eating,” said SRCS Food Services Director, Elena Dibble. 

The program, which started with a new salad bar at Glenwood Elementary in September of last year, is trying to improve the overall cafeteria experience. It has been spreading incrementally to various campuses and now five of San Rafael’s eight elementary schools have salad bars and, “a salad bar for San Rafael High School is on order right now,” Dibble said. 

Food consumption has increased in the schools with salad bars and the students are really enjoying the selection, according to Dibble. “They like the process of being able to choose what they like,” she said.   

"I think it's such a great development….and I wish that all of the kids in Marin County had access to such wonderful lunch options," said Dr. Tracey Hessel, Laurel Dell PTA President and Pediatrician. “It is really great to see how excited the kids have been to get to choose fresh fruits and vegetables every day." 

The biggest obstacle facing food services is budget restrictions. SRCS is part of the National School Lunch Program and receives federal commodity money to buy certain items. The budget per meal, including milk, is just over $1 and meeting the demands of the parents and pleasing the taste buds of the students on such a limited budget is challenging.    

“There are some parents who want us to serve only organic produce and that is just not feasible,” Dibble said.  “We have to operate food services in the black, like a small business within the school.”

Even with limited resources and restrictive budgets, food services has been able to put some organic produce on the lunch menu. “We work with Marin Organic and Marin Produce….and our goal for next year is to be 50 percent organic,”SRCS Food Production Manager Lisa Kenney said. Currently, all the yogurt being served in SRCS is from Straus, an organic creamery located in Petaluma.   

Still, some parents and students are not impressed with the efforts of Food Services and insist that lunches continue to be unhealthy and unappetizing. 

“The vegetables look like they come from Timbuktu,” said Leslie Laskin-Reese, mother of a Davidson 6th grader and a San Rafael High sophomore. “Their version of making things healthier is eliminating chocolate milk...I’d love to see a better program.”

Davidson 6th grader Olivia Hardwidge said that, the food "doesn’t look healthy at all and it’s really processed.”

Lunch is an important meal for school children and it is a chance to incorporate all the food groups, according to Jennifer Ferber, a San Rafael-based dietician and nutrition support clinician. “Making sure that kids get enough nutrients has to be a priority or there is going to be an epidemic,”she said. 

Food services’ conservation efforts include biodegradable lunch trays and salad dressing and yogurt dispensers that have eliminated the need for individually wrapped plastic containers.

As far as a comprehensive recycling program, Dibble admits that there is still a lot of work that could be done. “We want the kids to come up with a program,” she said, explaining that there will be a higher success rate if the program is developed by students rather than by food services.      

With new food services, Dibble and other school officials hope to be able to reduce their environmental impact while providing the students of SRCS with quality meals that are, when possible, organic and that support local farmers.

“I just want to feed them real food,” Dibble said.